Red Jenny Theater
by H. P. Lovecats
Summary: Oneshot. Sera/Inquisitor. Sera tries giving her lady friend a quick, well-intentioned, tomfoolery-based distraction.


"_Heeeeeere's_ Coryphetits. Grr, grr! Doom to the wooooorld!"

"If you could keep your voice down a little more, Sera," says the Inquisitor, turning the page.

"And here's the Archdemon! _Gyaaaaaaah_… Hey. You! Honeytongue, look. Look. Lookit."

"I know, Sera! Your left hand is Corypheus and your right hand is—"

"Look, all right?"

The Inquisitor drops the book. Sera has her hands behind the sheet hung on top of the bedposts, with a look like the sort of pseudo-grin that a dog might have. "Keep looking."

"I'm looking, Sera. You're looking right at me. You'll know if I'm not looking."

"Yeahhh, there's a point," says Sera. With a whump, she flops onto her stomach. Her left hand's wrapped in a bloody strip of plaidweave inked with a smudgy angry face. Her right hand's up-flung, at the start, and she brings it down in up-and-down bobs, wrapped in another plaidweave glove, pinned with two flaps of cloth. "_Whoomph… whoomph… whoomph… Brrshhhh…!_

"_Gyaaaaaah_…!" Sera licks her lips and takes her eyes off the wings and onto the Inquisitor. "You like my Archdemon?"

The Inquisitor sputters and giggles behind her fist.

"Heh! You like it loads, right? Looks like a bee. And I like bees better than Archdemons, so. Yeah."

"Yes—yes, I agree, I… do like it much, much better than the real one."

"Gaaah!" Sera grins down at her left hand like she's fixing to bite it. "Get—_off_ me, nngh! Stupid Archdemons… Daft choice of pet for daft people! But. What the toss, he's here now! And I'm here. We're here to smash your Skyhold, because honestly what else am I going to do with an Archdemon? 'Cept burn junk, I suppose. I'm here to smash and burn your Skyhold." She brings up her right, whispers another "gyaaaaaah!", and punches the bedpost with the heel of her palm. Whump. Whump. She squeals to herself with her teeth showing. "Oh no, oh _noooo_. Who ever could stop them?"

"Who, indeed?" The Inquisitor flashes her teeth, too, behind her hand.

"Asking all the stupid questions. C'mon, honeytongue, you won't stand for this, will you?"

"I wouldn't dare, but—you only have two hands…"

"Yeah, so lend me one." Sera bounces on the edge of the bed, and in a blink her rag-wrapped hands are yanking the Inquisitor's arm.

"I don't have a puppet!"

"You don't need a stinking puppet. I need puppets 'cause my hands are too nice-looking for Coryphyshit and his stupid Arsedemon. You got nice hands and you're nice-looking, so your hands can be you. I don't need to say it again, come _on_."

The Inquisitor tries to balance herself with a hand on the desk, and then onto the book. The book slides out from under her and whamps onto the floor as Sera pulls and swings her around onto the bed, giggling. She flops over again, and the Inquisitor settles on hands and knees next to her, watching for a go-ahead.

Sera returns to her post-punching and grrraaaagh-ing. Her puppet Corypheus remains on stand-by.

The Inquisitor turns her head, and Sera turns her own.

Sera's brow is cocked. "What you waiting around for? I don't want to have to pretend the bloody bee-dragon's setting our people on fire. Fire's not fun. You know it, I know it. Get yourself in here."

"What do I do?"

"Kill the friggin' Archdemon!"

The Inquisitor pauses—and then holds her hand up between the bedposts, flat and straight.

"You got legs. Andraste _knows_."

The Inquisitor turns the hand upside down and makes a pair of fingers.

"Right. Now jump for it. The Archdemon's got wings. This'll be a boring fight if you wait on the ground."

"I can't really jump that high, Sera."

"Yeah, you can! You can because—you _can_. Jump!"

"—All right. Uh. _Boing_…"

"'_Boing'_!" Sera snorts—and slams the Archdemon puppet down on the mattress on a tap from the Inquisitor's finger. "Hurraaaaah, you've _stabbed_ it to death! Now—hold up." She bites into the glove.

The Archdemon glove, like the Corypheus glove, is bloody. There's an unpleasant hotness in the back of the Inquisitor's throat. She ducks down. "Would you like some help?"

"Help me get the last of my tights off, right," Sera says through her teeth, or it's _probably_ what she says—mostly R-sounds. She growls, wiggles her head like a snake trying to angle around an egg, and her hand whips free. She throws and spits the glove aside and makes a finger-person, like the Inquisitor, and bobs it up and down with a sideways look.

The Inquisitor blinks. "Line?"

"I'm not the boss of you. Just say something."

"Ah—Sera! I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this without you!"

"Do what."

"Bring down Corypheus."

"_Stick it to Corphyreus_."

"I'm glad I won't be sticking it to Corphyreus without you."

"Not like I had to go very far," Sera says, "since, you know, this is Skyhold, which is where we all usually are, including you and me. But then again I set this up that way, soooo." Sera coughs and jerks her left hand around. "Ah-hahahaha_haaaa_. The Inquisitor!"

"And Red Jenny." The Inquisitor smirks.

Sera scoffs. "And… Red Jenny! You failed to kill me the first time! Where are your avalanche-machines now?"

"We killed your Archdemon!"

"I know, right? This fight shall be our laaaaaaahst… Ahhh!" Sera's right hand kicks the puppet in the angry-face.

The Inquisitor copies. Sera does it again, the Inquisitor does it again, the Corypheus puppet swats, the Inquisitor swats, swat swat swatswatswatswatswat—

"Urgghhhh! I can't take it any mooore…" Sera slaps her hand down on the bed, and announces, "Death by slappy-fight."

"That was easy," the Inquisitor giggles.

"Oh, _say_ it's 'cause we're badass. This is supposed to be funny. Except that part's true—the badass part."

"Well, very well, then. We've saved the world!"

"I'm not feeling it."

"We've _saaaaaved_ the world!" The Inquisitor pumps her fist.

"Because we're badass."

"Because we're badass."

"_There's_ my honeytongue." Sera bites off the Corypheus glove. The odd tart hotness in the Inquisitor's throat returns. Sera discards the glove, and bounces onto her elbows. "We win! Everything's good 'cause we're _badass_. Your words. And badasses get to celebrate, so. Victory kiss."

"Ah." The Inquisitor gags on a laugh. "With our..." She lifts her hand, opens and closes it like a mouth. "Like _this_, honestly? That's..."

"Yeah!" Sera cackles. "_Silly_, right? Takes as much time as real kissing but's nowhere near as fun. Not that I would _know_, just... pretending some stuff can take as long as the real thing. Like, have you ever had a pretend sword fight?" She scowls and drops it, decisively lacing her fingers. "I want some of _that_ more. Some real kissing. It works, right? Works better, and we can do more with that."

"We haven't actually beaten Corypheus yet."

"I know that! What you want me to say? That you deserve it for playing sock puppets with me? C'mon. You, me, bed… sheet. Here. Sheet." Sera yanks the sheet from the bedposts. Sera smirks. It slides. Her brow knits and she snatches after it. She misses and falls, belly on the edge of the bed, catching herself on her hands. "Well. Shite. I got it, though."

The Inquisitor grabs her arm, pulls her up as she waves the sheet like a flag. "I was, ah. I mean, I should pick that book up."

"What for? Your book going somewhere? I can go anywhere anytime. Except I don't feel like it and I bet the book won't care if it's on the floor. And if it does, it can get back up to the desk itself, but it won't, because it doesn't have a brain or arms or legs, so sod it."

"What was that Vivienne was saying about snakes?"

"Well—snakes already move. Don't they? I mean—you could stick legs on a book. Like table legs. But it wouldn't move 'em, right? And even then, books don't bite because they don't have teeth. Except they can papercut—Vivienne… she wouldn't do that, right? Not to you! Turn your books into snakes?"

"I was just playing, Sera."

"Oh, _now_ you're playing!" Sera rolls a shake into her voice into a giggle, tumbles onto her side, props her head up on the heel of her palm. She slaps the bed in front of her. "Well, good, 'cause I'm going to need to forget. You know. Books into snakes. Brrr!"

The Inquisitor does the same—smoothes a sigh out into a laugh, lets everything come to rest with a shake of her head. She pulls herself forward on an arm.

"_Ah_, so heroic," says Sera.

"Those who work hard get to play hard, right?" Her smile's not so much knowing as asking.

"We were playing at working hard. But it's still doing something right, innit."

* * *

_Cross-posted to AO3._


End file.
